Contact us anytime to know more — Abhishek P., Founder & CFO CISIN
Maintainability
Imagine that you are tasked with modifying and improving a Test Script or Suite after the software under test has been redesigned.
The key is to fix any problems that arise during the trial. Not only that but there's more. The code's clarity is also vital to the person who wrote it and anyone who looks at it.
A maintainable script is well-structured, follows good coding standards, well-documented, and easily understood.
It can also be updated quickly, which reduces the amount of time and effort needed to keep it up to date. You can improve the automation maintainability in many ways. If your tests can't be read, you won't maintain them. Modular code is the second option, and it involves breaking down your test scripts into smaller, easier-to-manage, updated, or reused functions.
Relevant to Business
You must align your tests with the business objectives and requirements. The main goal is to ensure that the functional test is relevant for end users.
The test contributes to overall business goals and catches any deviations that could impact user experience or business operations. This also highlights the importance of prioritizing the automated QA software efforts to the most critical aspects of the software development lifecycle from a business standpoint.
In this area, it is essential to focus on the risk. Two key ways that we can see to make automation relevant for the business are: First, ensure it is aligned with the business goals.
Ask yourself: "Is it aligned with the business goal?" Do we know the purposes of my business? “Am designing my tests to validate the most critical features and functionality to achieve these goals?" If any of the answers is no, delete the test.
Second, there is the risk-based test. You should identify and prioritize the tests according to the impact and risk of a potential failure.
Tests should be conducted more thoroughly on features that have a high impact on the business.
Clear Traceability
It is essential to link test cases and results quickly back to requirements or user interface stories. Each test should have a purpose directly related to the performance or functionality of the software or application under test.
It is essential to have clear traceability so that stakeholders can understand what's being tested and why, as well as how the results are related to the project objectives.
This is crucial for reporting, understanding coverage, and verifying all business requirements have been validated.
When you do this, you'll want to map each test case with the specific requirements or user stories it validates.
Back then, we used a Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Cucumber-based and keyword-driven testing Framework.
Tags can be a helpful way to organize features and scenarios. These are useful for running subsets of scenarios.
A second tip is to name the tests so that they indicate their purpose and functionality. If you give your tests ambiguous names, it isn't easy to understand what the test does. It should be easy to understand the test, what it's for, and how it will help you.
The correct naming can also help with debugging later because you will know which area of your app to check if something goes wrong.
Reusability
It is possible to use the same test script or component of a test script in different test scenarios and projects.
Reusability increases consistency and reduces effort in creating and maintaining test scripts. Modularly designed tests are the key. Current functionalities can be encapsulated in reusable classes or functions.
We have worked on teams with multiple sprint teams. Each team had its login but did the same thing. This code smell is a warning that your tests are probably not readable.
Avoiding duplication will make your tests more reusable. There's still more to the quiz checklist.
Modularize your scripts for tests by dividing them into smaller and more reusable methods and functions. This will allow you to reuse the components in multiple tests.
Using a test framework that supports reuse from the beginning is also important. This includes those that support data-driven tests, provide methods for setup and teardown, and have a way to set up and tear down.
You can save time by using a framework that already has multiple features.
Manageable and Scalable
Manageable is a test suite that's easy to update or adjust, well-organized, and navigable. This also means that test execution, reporting, and monitoring are user-friendly and streamlined.
Scalability refers to a test suite's ability to grow, either in terms of more test cases, complex scenarios, or software functionality.
Scalable tests are easily extendable and maintain performance even with increased demand. Many people say that sometimes it's okay to write the automation QA tester.
When you try to scale the system, it becomes a problem. If you think about how to make your tests scalable and manageable from the start, it will be easy to go from a small suite of tests to thousands.
Two essential methods can be used to make automation more manageable. You'll need to follow coding standards. It makes it easier to maintain, understand, and expand the codebase.
You should have a sniffer to help you ensure that your automated tests follow conventions or standards, even if you don't do code reviews.
This will be a great help to your team, primarily if they work with multiple sprint teams. When writing automated tests, you'll want to ensure that each team is consistent.
The second best practice involves running your tests as many times as possible. This will allow you to determine if your tests are reliable and make them easier to manage. Continuous integration and continuous delivery are worth investigating.
It would be best if you integrated your tests into a CI/CD system to automate them and manage them.
Accessible Across the Company
You must make your test scripts, related results, and documentation readily accessible and easily understandable by all stakeholders within the organization.
It can include testers, developers, and project managers, as well as business analysts, sometimes even upper management. Two management reports were run quarterly to see where we stood with our testing. What were the test results? What did you consider a failure to be? What was successful in the project? What was successful?
The reports were helpful because there was no dashboard at that time. We eventually created one which made it simple for anyone to view the results.
It saved a lot of time. Your test suite and its outputs should be presented in a way that is also easy to understand by non-technical personnel.
The tool you use to test should be easy for multiple team members to navigate. This will ensure transparency in the collaboration and that all involved parties can benefit from the testing process.
The whole team must participate in automation rather than just one person. It would be best if you involved the entire squad in this effort.
One way to achieve that is by making your tests as easily accessible as possible.
Documenting your test case processes and results in a way that's easy to understand by all stakeholders is one way to achieve this.
You will also want to create a dashboard for testing. Dashboards can be used to provide a high-level summary of test results. This will make the information easily digestible by non-technical stakeholders and your entire team.
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Test Automation: What is it?
Automating testing is a great way to help testers. It is not meant to replace testers. It's a tool to enhance testing.
Your SDLC should start with good automation.
Create A Scorecard To Prioritize Which Tests To Automate
Scorecards can be made by separating features from test scenarios. You want to use a set of criteria - your critical success factors - to evaluate each system.
Ask questions like:
- Does this item have a critical path?
- Is it necessary to test this because of a legal concern?
- Are there any data and environment setups?
- Does this item get a lot of use?
You can then determine which tests are most valuable to automate. You can prioritize your tests by creating a scorecard.
Automate the highest-value tests first.
Utilize Personas in Automation
Personas are another way to prioritize automation. Personas help us to focus on the most critical tests. They also help us make decisions about the test design and functionality.
Personas help us prioritize features, target users, and give a consistent perspective of them. This will improve your test coverage and focus on the end-user behavior.
Marketing Data: How to Apply the Insights
You can use marketing data as well to drive automated tests. It's essential to keep in mind the actions of our customers and their interactions with our application.
Marketing data helps us to:
- Most popular devices used by people
- Most popular browsers used by people
- Most common application flows.
- There are specific points where users abandon applications due to poor user experience.
We can then focus on testing the devices that are most commonly used by the people who drive our business. We can also apply persona-based testing conditions using geolocation to match the time zone of our customers and the network profile they use.
Test Automation Metrics - Pros and cons
Total Test Duration
Total test duration is the time it takes to run all automated tests.
Pros: Test duration is an essential metric because tests are often a bottleneck during the agile test-driven development cycle.
If tests aren't fast enough, they won't be run at all.
Cons: The total test time tells you little about the quality of tests performed. It could be a better measure of software quality.
Unit Test Coverage
The unit test coverage is the percentage of software code covered by tests. The unit test coverage metric provides a rough estimate of how well-tested a software codebase is.
Con: A unit test is just a simple test of one single unit. The car may have all the components working perfectly, but more is needed to guarantee that the vehicle will work.
Unit tests do not cover integration or acceptance tests, vital to ensuring software is functional. In addition, unit tests in most development languages only measure the code uploaded into memory. Many cases, a significant portion of the code must be uploaded to memory.
It is, therefore, not examined, so the 100% may not reflect the actual code base.
Read More: Which Steps Are Included in the Process of QA Automation?
Path Coverage
The path coverage metric measures the number of linearly independent tests that cover the paths.
Pros: Path coverage is a comprehensive test that increases testing quality. Each statement is executed at least once, with complete path coverage.
Cons: The number of paths grows exponentially as the number of branches increases. It is so adding an if statement in a function that has 11 accounts increases the number of ways from 2048 up to 4096.
Test Cases And Requirements Coverage
The requirement coverage shows which features are being tested and how many tests align with a particular user story or requirement.
Pros is an essential indicator of test automation maturity, as it measures how many features are automated and delivered to the customer.
Cons: Coverage of requirements is a vague measure that is hard to quantify. It also requires more work to monitor regularly.
A test connected to a specific condition may only verify a small portion of functionality and provide little value.
Percentage Passed Or Failed
This metric counts the number of tests recently passed or failed as a percent of all tests scheduled.
Pros: Counting how many tests have passed or failed provides an overview of the testing progress.
You can create bar graphs that show passed test cases, tests that failed, and difficulties that still need to be run. You can compare data across releases and days.
Cons: Counting the number of test cases that have passed does not tell you anything about their quality.
A test may pass simply because it checked a trivial test condition or because of an error in the code. However, the software might need to be fixed as expected. This metric also does not indicate what percentage of software is covered by actual tests.
Number Found Of Defects In Testing
The number of defects that were found during the testing phase.
Pros: The number of defects found is a measure of how bad a release of the software is in comparison to previous releases.
The number of defects is helpful in predictive modeling. You can estimate the remaining weaknesses under certain coverage levels.
Cons: This is a misleading metric that can be easily manipulated. A higher number of defects is a sign of better testing.
However, it could also indicate the opposite. A testing team rewarded with this metric may be motivated to find many defects, even if they are unimportant.
Percentage of Automated Test Coverage
This metric shows the percentage of coverage achieved by automated tests compared to manual tests. Calculate it by dividing the mechanical range by the total coverage.
Pros: This metric is used by the management to evaluate the progress of an QA manual and automation test initiative.
Con: An increased percentage of automated tests can mask test quality issues. Do the new computerized tests, as well as the manual tests, detect defects?
Test Execution
Test execution is one of the most common metrics displayed by test automation software. It shows all tests that were executed in a given build.
Pros: Test execution is an essential statistic for understanding if automated tests run as expected.
Cons: Tests can produce false positives or false negatives. The fact that they were run, or a certain percentage passed, doesn't guarantee that the software is good.
Useful vs Irrelevant Results
This is a metric that compares beneficial test results against irrelevant tests. This is how you can distinguish between valuable and useless results:
- Valid test results: A test failure or a pass. A defect must have caused the test failure.
- Irrelevant results: Test failures caused by changes in the software or issues with the testing environment.
Pros: Irrelevant Results highlight factors that reduce automation efficiency from an economic perspective.
Compare irrelevant results to valuable results based on a set acceptable level. You can improve automated testing by investigating and analyzing why the rate of irrelevant tests is high.
Cons: This metric needs to be more helpful for assessing software quality. It can only help to understand problems within the test itself.
Production Defects
Agile teams often use this metric to measure the efficiency of automated testing - the number of serious bugs found after the software has been released.
Pros: You can use automated tests to catch future defects.
Cons: Many serious issues do not manifest as defects in the production. Weaknesses should not be allowed to appear on display.
This is a "last resort," but teams should strive to find faults earlier in the development cycle.
Percentage Broken Builds
If automated tests fail, they can "break" a build in an agile process. This metric tracks how many forms have been broken due to automated tests failing and, by extension, the code quality that engineers contributed to the codebase.
Pros: The percentage of broken builds is often considered a sign of good engineering practices and code.
A decrease in the rate of sporadic forms indicates that engineers are becoming more responsible for their code's accuracy and stability.
Cons: Concentrating on this metric may lead to "finger-pointing" and developers' reluctance to commit to the primary branch.
It can cause defects to appear much later in the development cycle, which has negative consequences.
Three Types Of Test Cases To Automate First
Unit testing, integration testing, and functional testing are all critical for automating. All of these should be included in your overall automation objectives.
Unit Testing
Unit testing is a fast method of testing, and should therefore be your top priority in automating. It's because they are easier to debug.
These tests are very reusable. These tests are easy to fix, and you can implement them using a variety of frameworks, regardless of the programming language.
Integration Testing
Priority should be given to integration testing. This is where we test our modules or interfaces. These tests allow us to ensure that all is functioning as expected.
Integration tests run faster and can give us feedback when automated.
Functional Testing
Functional testing is a great way to match your codebase with the right tools and QA automation framework.
You should, therefore, prioritize it from the start. These tests will allow you to identify the flawed ones. We want to avoid any flaky tests.
Four Things to Consider Before Automating
Consider a few factors before deciding which test cases you want to automate. You'll get a better ROI from your automation effort.
Test Maintenance
Maintenance costs must be considered. We commit to maintaining the scripts we create for as long as we want or until they are removed.
This should help you decide whether to write the hands or not.
Your Toolchain
Automation tools should be more noticed. Will you purchase tools, or will you use open-source? Consider the tools and the supporting tools.
Remember maintenance when upgrading your operating system or language. It's another app to maintain.
Documentation/Implementation
Documentation, implementation, and training will also take our time. As people leave and join the team, we must spend more time on these things.
It's therefore essential to consider all these costs when automating. These costs should be included in the return on investment.
Organizational Constraints
Our company also imposes some organizational restrictions on us. This could include our project budget and schedule or the technical abilities of our staff.
We should automate our automation scripts based on their frequency of use and criticality.
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Bottom Line
You don't have to automate every test you run. You may be investing time and money if you automate many tests that require constant maintenance.
You should instead adopt a risk-based approach so that you only automate the most valuable tests. Automating the most practical features is essential. Make sure they are automated correctly to ensure long-term sustainability.
